Fathers Day - The Longest Sunday Dinner of the Year!* Sticky Beef, Goat Cheese Crottin, Chicken and Mushroom Filo Parcel, Tarte aux Fraises

*As in, this is the longest Sunday of the year since tomorrow is the longest day of the year, rather than this felt like the longest Sunday dinner of the year, because it was all too short, of course. I was somewhat restricted this weekend as I was 'on-call' to come into work if needed, but that finished this morning at 9am, so today I went mad. Beautiful hot day, windows all open, Ricky Gervais on pod-cast while my other half watched the World Cup...happy June days.

Starting with starters...We ate Sticky Beef Skewers with home-made garlic & chive mayo, and toasted goats cheese with dressed chicory leaves. My brother is a vegetarian of sorts, in that he eats fish and shell-fish, but no meat as such, hence the variety of starters. The beef is a Nevin Maguire recipe, and Nevin kindly supplied a super recipe for the garlic and chive mayonnaise to go with them in the newspaper last weekend (Thanks Mum!). Where would we be without food-processors, chaps? How was mayo ever even conceived of before this wondrous invention? Anyway, the beef was the hit of the night for the guest of honour (Dad), marinated (admittedly for too short a time) and then grilled. Don't forget to soak the skewers in water to prevent them burning under the grill - I did, but not for long enough and they got pretty charred. These kebabs were succulent with the home-made mayo, which tastes rich and complex compared to the highest quality commercial stuff (which I also love, God help me!). Good for a party I'd say, you could probably serve them warm rather than just-out-of-the-oven.

Next up, was the goat cheese, little crottins rolled in sesame seeds and warmed in the oven on rounds of toasted herby soda bread, which I made last night. Its worth noting that for the sesame seeds to stick properly you need to remove the rind (unlike in this picture, you'll note, but it demonstrates the point pretty well as there aren't too many sesame seeds on the rind in the photo!). The chicory leaf bed was dressed with a white wine, oil & mustard dressing, and the whole lot went down very well. Chicory is kinda bitter but I like it, though some rocket would have let the bitterness down somewhat.

For main course I made crunchy chicken & mushroom filo parcels, another Ballymaloe recipe. This is a combination of poached chicken breasts, fried bacon, and creamy mushrooms with onions wrapped up in a filo pastry parcel. This would normally be right up my street but I think there was too much meat to the amount of sauce specified. In the photo on the right the parcel split open looks a little dry, and that's sort of what we found these boys to be. In future, I probably wouldn't combine the meat with the saucy 'shrooms before making up the filo packages, but rather add chicken and bacon to the parcel, and then add some mushroomy sauce before closing the parcel, for better sauce distribution. If the filling was a little more saucy I'd say these would have been much better-received, because the crunchy filo pastry was lovely.















Having said all that, there were no leftovers! The Italian roast potatoes pictured (more of the mayo used up here!) were yum - simply baby spuds cut in half, parboiled, and then roasted with olive oil and rosemary (my neglected rosemary helping me out again this weekend!). We ate something akin to these last week in Andersons in Glasnevin, footsore & hungover after an Irish wedding, and they were restorative to say the least. Its the quality of the garlic mayo, or aioli, that makes the dish I think (but I was hungover, and unreliable at best...).

Finally, my Tarte aux Framboise, ala Gordon Ramsey. Except, of course (there's always a 'but' with me...) mine was with lovely Irish strawberries rather than Gordon's raspberries. It should therefore be a Tarte aux Fraises, I think? And doesn't it look pretty on my retro Oxfam cake stand, my pride and joy? The pastry is a sweet pastry, sugar & butter combined in a food processor (again, what a wonderful machine), then pulsed with an egg and then flour. In this recipe the big revelation for me was making my own custard - its gorgeous! I didn't think I even liked custard, but I would eat this hot, cold or licked off the back of a dirty spoon, good God its to die for! The tart filling is cooled custard with softly whipped cream folded in to it. You dot your sliced strawberries on top, and glaze them with some strawberry jam. I think strawberries taste far more strawberry-y/ish at room temperature, rather than super-cold, but this tart does need a bit of a chill to firm up the custard cream before cutting, in order to avoid a messy strawberry-custard massacre on the dining table. The unanimous verdict was that the tart won the day. For me, it was the custard discovery... Happy Fathers Day!